Outed by a 12 year old!

Do you know children actually do listen to what you say, especially if you're not sure you want them to!

Recently I have started helping out with the kids work in our Church and I've particularly enjoyed helping out in the 9-12 year old group which is made up mostly of 11 year olds with a fairly equal gender mix. They are sassy and full of questions and a great bunch of kids but yesterday, amongst all the usual 'is it OK to talk to dead people' questions I seem to attract, one of the boys asked me what my job was. Quick as a flash one of the other boys answered him. 'Oh she's got a really cool job, she's writing a book!'. Now I know this chap quite well, he's a friends son and lives just up the road from me and recently I've been helping him make a paper mache castle for his history homework. Clearly, while we've been gluing endless bits of paper to balloons I have been talking to him about my story but I had no idea he'd taken it all in until he proceeded to tell the curious questioner all about it, about how mean I was to my characters, about how unfair he felt the death of one of the main characters was and he explained the general plot so well I'm thinking of asking him to write my back cover for me! I was flabbergasted and made a mental note to be a little more sparing of the details in the future.  On the other hand I might offer him a job as my publicist, he made the story seem so exciting the other boys were casting the film by the end of the session and getting very excited about all the talk shows I'd have to go on. It was quite heady stuff, I had to remind them that it wasn't finished yet and that I didn't have an agent, much less a publisher so we were all getting ahead of ourselves a little but nothing could dampen their enthusiasm and I think, if I'm honest, their excited anticipation is what led to a mammoth writing session in the wee small hours of last night, I've got to finish it now, otherwise my whole Humanoids class will be so disappointed.

So there you are, my tale of the day a 12 year old outed my secret life as a writer of science fiction and gave me a little taste of fame.